


We're Not Driving (How did we get here?)

by TimTheToaster (tabletoptime)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Tim Drake-centric, Tim's life can seem kind of sad sometimes, but thats what family is for right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabletoptime/pseuds/TimTheToaster
Summary: Tim stared at his phone, as if that would change what was on the screen.Dick Grayson @FlyingDGraysonIt took some doing, and in some cases a little blackmail, but we've finally got the whole family together for a movie night! #WayneManor #movienight #familytime #schedulingisanightmare15 minutes ago
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 17
Kudos: 692





	We're Not Driving (How did we get here?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ReplacementRobin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReplacementRobin/gifts).



Tim stared at his phone, as if that would change what was on the screen.

Stupid. Childish. He couldn't help it.

Despite his unwavering stare, the instagram post didn't go anywhere.

It was a picture of a media room at the Manor, the one with the biggest couch and the best screen-to-movie-selection ratio. In frame was a line of people curled in various positions on the furniture and the floor, half of them not even acknowledging the camera despite the beaming grin on Dick's face, which took up a third of the frame in true awkwardly-angled-selfie fashion. Damian scowled at the back of his head as Stephanie held bunny-ears behind him and Cass smiled into her popcorn. Bruce was only half visible, turning away to block someone Tim was pretty sure was Jason from view, but his shoulders were relaxed. Duke sat at the foot of Babs' wheelchair, craning slightly to talk to her, and judging by her face he was telling some kind of joke.

_Dick Grayson_ **_@FlyingDGrayson_ **

_It took some doing, and in some cases a little blackmail, but we've finally got the whole family together for a movie night! #WayneManor #movienight #familytime #schedulingisanightmare_

_15 minutes ago_

They looked relaxed and happy.

"Tim?" Tam's voice cut through his focus and his gaze snapped to her. "Your five o'clock is running late, his daughter's school called and he had to go talk to their administration."

Tim dragged himself back to his own present. Right, he was waiting on the quarterly report from Financial about funding distribution among WE's non-profits. Initially, these reports had been all electronic, but Tim had found that by making them in-person he was able to ground the department in the real impacts of these organizations and it decreased the number of requests he received a month to make cutbacks. He had still needed to replace a good portion of the direction team to even make that shift viable, but it was worth it for the decreased headaches and discussions over people's rights to access adequate care and resources.

"Are you okay?"

He waved Tam's concern off. He was just tired. "I'm fine. Tell Mr.Ouelet not to worry about coming back in, if he can meet me early tomorrow morning instead he can make the report then." 

"You have your weekly update from R&D at eight," Tam frowned.

"So I'll be here at seven again," Tim shrugged. "I was going to be anyway to finish some paperwork, and Ouelet is usually quick. He'll be in and out and then everything will be fine."

"Alright, as long as you're confident it won't run long like it did last quarter." Tam tapped away at her phone, no doubt updating their calendars and sending the email request as they spoke. "There's been some kind of fancy science thing happening in the labs, so this week's report from them is probably worth hearing. And this was your last appointment of the day, so I'm going to head home unless you need me for anything else?"

Tim smiled at her on reflex, pleasantly empty and polite. "No, thanks Tam. I'm going to finish off a few things here just in case Ouelet does ramble, and then I'll be leaving as well."

Tam grimaced and pointed a finger at him. "Don't give me the mannequin look, that's creepy as hell. I'll see you tomorrow, but you had better bring coffee for making me come in early."

"Of course," he laughed. "Have a good night."

After she left, he turned back to his desk to actually finish that paperwork so he could get home in time for a pre-patrol nap. His phone was still sitting there, screen dimmed by his inactivity. The hollow in his gut opened back up.

Maybe he should alter his patrol route to check in on the others' territory, if they were all spending the night in. Unless their plans involved going out later?

He could call to ask, but just the thought ground his teeth. It was none of his business what they wanted to do with their evening, it _wasn't_.

What _was_ his business, which he really needed to stop ignoring in favour of his stupid, selfish hurt, was his job. This was only a surprise because he let himself get greedy and play pretend about his own importance. As if he'd ever given any of them a reason to care about him outside of their shared work.

He really ought to know better by now.

On some half-learned muscle memory, he reached for the mug on his desk. It wasn't empty, though it sure wasn't warm anymore, but that wasn't the point. Take a sip, take a breath, take a second. And refocus.

It was okay.

Setting the mug back in its corner, Tim pulled a folder towards himself and started in on the eighth expense report of the evening.

\--

It was closer to eight than seven by the time he finally made it home. Shoes discarded by the door haphazardly didn’t matter; he would be leaving via the secret garage later anyways. His nap would have to be short, unless he wanted to make something quick rather than a real meal for dinner. While that was a tempting prospect, Tim was intimately familiar with the unpleasantness of patrolling without the right kind of food ahead of time.

It sucked _ass_.

Anyways, too long a nap and he risked being groggy all night. Forty-five minutes ought to hit his sleep cycles perfectly, and if he set some rice and vegetables to cook in his pressure cooker while he slept he could wake up to a meal. If he was feeling particularly hungry, he’d throw together a protein shake as well.

Tim was always annoyed when his f- when the others teased him for presumably living off of instant noodles and microwave dinners, as if he'd never needed to feed himself growing up. Sure he wasn't _good_ at cooking, and never got particularly creative, but what he made was always edible and if he liked it that was good enough. Trying out new recipes required downtime to actually find any and to go for specific groceries. And to find a replacement meal if it turned out he didn't like whatever it was he ended up with.

Too much hassle. If he didn't mind eating the same four meals on repeat every night, and he was only cooking for himself, then who cared?

It's not like he ever had guests over for more than coffee and a data request anyways. Hell, they barely ever left the vigilante areas of his apartment at all. Tim doubted Damian had ever seen his kitchen from anything other than one of B's respawning cameras that he periodically had to sweep for and remove.

His apartment, his rules on invasion of privacy, and he said no to being monitored 24/7 by his- coworkers.

Going to his bedroom to sleep would be a waste of time better spent unconscious, so Tim settled onto his couch, shifting around to try and get comfortable on the too-new springs. The white leather may look nice, but that was the full extent of its positive features; otherwise it was just slippery and weird.

He probably shouldn't have picked out furniture online by himself, but it wasn't like anyone else had been willing or available to go with him. And it wasn't their responsibility anyways. If Tim couldn't pick out practical and pleasing furniture on his own, that was his problem.

At least he always had the fluffy and ugly throws Bart would leave whenever he came over. Tim was half-convinced he had a giant nest of blankets somewhere he brought them from when he needed a place to crash for the night, since he never came back for them and came with a new one every time.

Tim set a timer on his phone, kicked off his slacks and threw his tie at the wall, and fell asleep.

\--

Only about twenty minutes later, there was a pounding at his door.

Tim jerked to his feet, pulling the spare bo from underneath the couch and crept carefully to the door, keeping half an ear on the apartment behind him.

Most threats wouldn't knock, or if they did they wouldn't knock so aggressively, but it could be a distraction while someone snuck in from somewhere else. Ra's assassins were getting more and more creative in their infiltration, after all, and Tim really didn't need them going through his pantry and stealing anything that didn't meet Ra's standards of health and replacing them with pre-cooked meals. He only had the time scheduled to go for groceries once a week, and he had been forced to get take out for five days straight, because he was _not_ touching food delivered by ninjas

Tapping the thermostat by the door, Tim pulled up a camera feed of the hallway. Peepholes were for suckers, after all.

Standing at his door, were Dick, Jason, and Damian of all people. Jason was holding a pizza, and Dick had a plastic bag with what Tim thought might be ice cream. Damian had his arms crossed, but his expression was neutral-grumpy rather than the flat out hateful it tended to be in Tim's presence.

Was something wrong with his security system? Had he been hacked? There was no way this footage was real, after all.

Before Tim could decide whether or not to open the door to see who was really there, the slightest sound of movement from further in his apartment caught his attention. The minute squeak to all of his windows was an intentional feature, and he had memorized the differences in each window’s sound. Though that they were opening at all meant someone had managed to bypass both his cyber-security and the analogue traps he had set up at every entrance. Professional.

So the knocking _had_ been a distraction.

Tim moved away from the door, not turning his back to whoever was behind it, but trusting in his deadbolt to at least slow them down if they tried to help their ally in the inevitable fight.

Although the squeaking of his windows had been audible, if barely, whoever was now inside was dead-silent, which ratcheted them up another notch on Tim's threat assessment. Whoever it was, they were very skilled at infiltration.

Maybe he would be lucky and it would just be passive aggressive ninjas. Tim wasn't counting on it.

_There_ , a faint creak gave away that they were in the hallway connecting his living room to his bedroom. Tim slid around the corner, keeping low to give him an edge in surprise, and swung his staff at a standard knee height-

Only to be stopped by a booted foot twisting around the bo and redirecting the blow into the ground, but not pulling the weapon from his grasp. Tim pulled himself to his feet, already sweeping low as he surged upwards only to stop dead in the face of his smiling- Cass.

"Hi," she said, casually stepping around his staff and catching his elbow to pull him into a hug.

Tim blinked at her, startled. “Hi?”

Cass released him, letting her hands linger on his shoulders as she passed him, and went to Tim’s front door, opening it to shoot the others, who had apparently really been behind it, an unimpressed look. “Banging is rude. Supposed to knock.”

Dick grinned contritely, as Jason shouldered his way by to set the pizza on Tim’s coffee table. “Our hands were full, and Dami refused to touch the door because he’s a germaphobe. We had to kick it.”

“There is no telling what kind of riff raff live in Drake’s building, let alone which of his enemies may have found a way to somehow poison or tamper with his doorknob. It was not worth the risk,” Damian huffed.

What were any of them doing here? Tim tried to ask as much, but all he managed was a weak “Huh?”

He was met with a laugh from Jason. “Surprise, babybird. Dick tried to call you about movie night, but he got redirected. So we talked to your scary assistant, the Fox girl, and she said you’d been working ten to fourteen hour days for two weeks. Then we talked to Babs and she said you’ve been out every night in those two weeks and had closed thirty cases in that time. I’d say I’m impressed, but mostly I just wanna know when the fuck you sleep.”

Cass was still smiling but her mouth tilted a little sad. “Now, usually. We woke him.”

For half a second there was a flash of something quiet and heavy across Dick’s face, but he rallied it back to a grin quickly. “So we decided to bring movie night to you! It was an unofficial race here, two teams of mixed experience. Except Cass, who was gone before anyone even got to the key box, and B, who said there was something he needed to pick up on the way over.”

Tim squinted between them. Was this some kind of trick?

“Babs, Steph, and Duke should be here soon. I think they made the mistake of letting Steph drive. Sure she’s actually got her license, but she always gets held up by road-rage,” Jason snickered, and took a look around. “So where do you keep your plates in this place? Are they even out of their packaging yet?”

“Upper cabinet, left of the fridge. Cups are the next one over,” Tim answered suspiciously. 

Cass came back to his side and gently turned him in the direction of his bedroom. “Go change. Pants, please. Soft only.”

After another push and taking a moment to watch Dick and Damian start rearranging his furniture. Apparently they weren’t satisfied with the angle or location of his couch. “Don’t touch the fish tank. The plastic swordtails don’t like to be jostled.”

“Fucking weirdo,” Jason snorted, setting the plates around the coffee table.

Tim changed quickly, stripping off his rumpled dress shirt and throwing on sweatpants and one of Kon’s shirts. He paused, debating the disadvantages of fuzzy socks and throwing discs. In the end he took both, socks on and discs in his pockets. Just in case this was some kind of test or something. Bruce was still on his way, and who knew what he had stopped to pick up.

Sure enough, the sound of his front door opening met him as he returned to the living room, and the cacophony of voices ticked up. Steph was swinging keys around her finger, silver flashing as she chatted with Babs, who was carrying a bag of jumbo marshmallows, and Duke, who was carrying a plastic bag full of ice cream. Cass closed the door behind them leaving it unlocked yet again. Dick and Damian were constructing some kind of elaborate blanket fort out of all of Bart’s throws, while Jason was-

“Hey! Stop poking at that, that’s my dinner!” Tim snapped, darting into the kitchen to shove him away from the now open pressure cooker.

Jason raised an eyebrow and cast a significant glance to the coffee table and the growing assortment of food on it. “I’m pretty sure it’s not. Hey, Day Patrol, it sound reasonable to you for Timbo to be eating unseasoned rice and veggies while we have pizza?”

“Only if he’s on some kind of special diet or something,” Duke shrugged. “But if that’s the case, my condolences, man. This pizza is from the definitely-not-mob-owned place in my old neighbourhood and it is to die for.”

“Not to mention we’ve got everything we need for sundaes afterwards!” Steph called from where she was burrowing into the blanket fort.

Tim scrubbed at his face. “And why am I eating ethically dubious pizza and sundaes when patrol starts in,” he glanced at his microwave. “Thirty minutes?”

A snicker from Babs had him glancing over just in time to stop the marshmallows from colliding with his face. “You’re not patrolling tonight. Mandatory dark day to prevent burnout and for family time. The Birds have the city tonight, and if anything goes seriously wrong I’m sure this place will light up like a christmas tree with alerts.”

Before Tim could make an argument about how he was _not_ at risk of burnout his front door opened yet again, but instead of a person all he could see was a… giant bean bag? With legs?

“B!” Dick yelled. “Did you seriously stop to get new furniture?”

“Tim doesn’t have any good lounging chairs, and I’ve been meaning to fix that for a while, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity,” Bruce’s voice was muffled until about partway through, when he set it down somewhere that had Damian hissing a complaint about structural integrity and architectural eye-sores. Hands now free, Bruce wrapped an arm around Tim’s shoulder and reeled him in. “I think it matches the aggressively neutral colour scheme you’ve got going on in here, don’t you think?”

Tim blinked, hands spasming around the marshmallows. “I guess?”

Cass slipped back into his field of vision, now holding the large fluffy blanket he only used in winter, which was supposed to be in the back of his closet right now, and pointedly steered both Tim and Bruce to the couch, kindly shoving them onto it. “Sit. We’re nearly ready.”

Neither of them really spoke, as everyone else bustled around Tim’s apartment, but Bruce kept him tucked against his side and arranged the blanket over them. The points on Tim’s shoulder where Bruce’s fingers idly tapped and circled were tingling, and ever so slowly he relaxed back into Bruce and the couch, letting that warmth run all the way down his side. Bruce turned and pressed his face into the top of Tim’s head, not really doing anything just. Breathing.

“This may be your house, birdbrain, but no way do you two get the whole couch! Budge over!” Steph shouldered her way next to Tim, scooping his feet into her lap and pressing close to get under the blanket. On the other side, Cass curled into Bruce’s other side, and he dutifully tucked the edge over her as well. Tim hadn’t realized his blanket was this big.

“That insult doesn’t even work. Half the people here get called that on a regular basis, there’s no way to know who you’re talking about,” Tim wiggled a foot under her shirt and dug his cold toes into her stomach, eliciting a shriek.

Dick and Jason were wrestling for the bean bag, while both Duke and Damian had settled into armchairs with their pizza. Babs rolled up beside the couch, operating his TV from her phone, and claiming a throw (Tim was pretty sure it was Black Canary themed though he had no idea where Bart had found it) for herself.

Bruce stretched forward for plates and pizza, and passed them out to the various couch-dwellers, though someone would need to actually get up if they wanted drinks. Later-Tim problems.

Distantly, a little voice in his head worried that this could still be some kind of elaborate set-up, but Tim ruthlessly squashed it. This was either incredible commitment to the ploy, or for real, and right now, warm and surrounded by bickering on all sides, Tim didn’t care either way.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of a fic exchange with the lovely ReplacementRobin (who recently posted their first fic you should definitely go check out!). She asked for some H/C about Tim's insecurity with his family, and I think this fits the bill? Hope you like it, b <3
> 
> But yes. Tim is on near perpetual Sad Boi Hours, but even he gets nice things sometimes! It's not that he can't or doesn't take care of himself, he's just constantly pushing his luck. Like living paycheck-to-paycheck but applied to every aspect of his life. But he deserves hugs and appreciation and so here and now he gets them!
> 
> Oh, and the title is a couple of lyrics pulled from "Brighter Than The Sun" by Brick + Mortar so feel free to check that out, if you enjoy music that's I guess sort of indie pop but also I'm bad at music genres so?
> 
> Drop a comment if you enjoyed, or just think specifically about peaches, and I'll get the message. Have a great day!


End file.
